JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > Not really 'by definition', more like 'by implementation'.
exactly right, and to be specific, the SBS implementation. for YEARS i have been saying the presence, or lack of it, of an AA tag should not mandatorily indicate anything regarding comp status one way or the other to SBS. its just a stupid criteria to mandatorily use to divine that info. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > I recently got a Sansa Fuze portable Mp3 player and loaded Rockbox on > it. Its database handling is simplistic, but it does one thing that > has made me think about SbS fairly complicated handling of > compilations. > > You can browse 'Album Artists' as well as 'Artists'. i'm sorry, but that sounds REALLY familiar!!! ;) surely you've noticed my rants on that topic? its so damn OBVIOUS that SBS fails in its "one master list only" paradigm, and a lowly sansa fuze can even outclass it. you should be able to browse either/or just by navigating or selecting instant sort options. having to mess with badly labelled options and or rescan is just a monumental FAIL. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > It doesn't recognize compilation albums as being any different than any > other album. If you give all compilations an album artist of "Various > Artists" (or, in my case "_Various Artists" to keep them at the top of > the artist list), then that's where you'll find your compilations. its like an echo chamber! :) nothing needs to know whats a comp and what isn't, not even SBS. its just some dumb nonsense that itunes developed prior to supporting AA tags, thats why it exists at all, and since ipods/itunes still need the tags, they persist. now, i have no beef with anything "knowing" whats a comp and what isn't, but its really not necessary normally, esp outside of icrap. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > What's also nice about being able to browse Album Artists is that you > don't have to fiddle with library settings of "Group compilation albums > together". You can either browse Artists, which includes all the > VA/track artists, or browse Album Artists. preach it! JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > I haven't experimented with it very much, though. Since I tag every > album with an ALBUMARTIST it works very well for me. I'm not sure what > would happen if simple, single artist albums had no ALBUMARTIST. I > suspect that those artists would not show up in the 'Album Artists' > list. i can't speak to the sansa fuze, but i'd guess its often unique to the app or device or whatnot. i'm not sure it really matters tho. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > What I've done when I transcoded my Flac library to Mp3 is add an > ALBUMARTIST=_Various Artists to every compilation, whereas its best to > leave these out of any VA album used with SbS. actually, it shouldn't hurt at all to have AA tags with SBS if you also have an explicit comp tag. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > I'm a little torn about whether or not this would be an improvement for > SbS. For one thing, it might force you to add ALBUMARTIST tags to > every album, which is not common, in order to use this browse mode. not common? WMP, winamp, and lots of others assign AA tags on all rips. itunes assigns comp tags, so it doesn't matter vis-a-vis SBS, the comp tag assigns it an AA value in SBS' implmentation. almost everything all my friends use who aren't obsessives like what you find in this forum, has either an AA tag or a comp tag. you see? thats the problem, thats the real issue! you say that such a browse mode would "force" users to add AA tags... ...well, i say they already are common, and i further say that what SBS actually does is FORCE users, like say WMP users, to either delete their AA tags which already exist at rip time, or add COMP tags, which their app [wmp] doesn't do or support! sometimes i feel like i'm in bizzaroland that i have to explain this over and over again (not to you Jim, but just in general here in the forums) and i get vitriolic reactions or near religious objections. i have posited here that i basically feel that SBS was designed in a reactive way to itunes, and thats where this insane stuff comes from, b/c itunes has a retarded, insane paradigm of its own. but clearly at this point, everything about comps and how to browse in SBS, really needs a serious rethinking. i realize (based on past exp) that what i am saying and the way i'm saying it will enflame some delicate sensibilities around here, but honestly, i think those folks need to get over it. this isn't personal in any way, its just saying lets get out of our mindlessly blind little box and acknowledge reality, please! JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > Also, Rockbox can't sort albums by artist, so I'm not sure what it would > end up looking like in SbS. (We've all seen SbS bugs where the album was > sorted by one of the track artists in a compilation.) the thing to do is to just let the chips fall as you would logically expect them to. meaning that you just let the album appear multiple times under each artist on the comp. don't like that? just switch to AA. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > Sorting by album artist would solve it, but again might force you to add > that tag to get the functionality. ...as opposed to forcing you to delete it as it does now? ;) besides, the existing SBS VA auto detection, which should be optional, could be used if you wanted it which would save you the need to add AA tags, if you were one of the tiny minority without either AA tags or comp tags. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > One solution in SbS, since it has the concept of contributor 'roles' > would be to assign one or more artists as album artist to every album > that doesn't have an explicit ALBUMARTIST tag. If every track on an > album has 'Jackson Browne' as an ARTIST, then he also becomes an album > artist. In the end all that might do is move the complexity away from > detecting compilations to detecting album artists, and really isn't > much different. part of your confusion is based on the one master list BS that SBS uses. i think tags should be a one for one match in SBS, and certain fields in the SBS DB, like "track artists" which have no tag match shouldn't exist. the current system is whats needlessly complex. JJZolx;600170 Wrote: > Still, I really like being able to have the flexibility of either > browsing Album Artists or Artists rather than having it one way or the > other due to a poorly understood and difficult to implement > configuration setting. amen! -- MrSinatra www.lion-radio.org using: sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbrec & ipeng (parents' home) - sbs 7.5.2b - win xp pro sp3 ie8 - p4(ht) 3.2ghz, 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655 - 45k+ mp3 ::VOTE FOR 'BUG 15604' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15604)!!!:: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=84475 _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
